


Four-Part Harmony

by Xparrot



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Angst, Carlos in the Desert Otherworld, Episode e058: Monolith, Hopeful ending?, Introspection, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Post-Episode: e049 Old Oak Doors Part B, Present Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 17:57:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2859821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xparrot/pseuds/Xparrot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos talks to Cecil nearly every night, but there are some things he isn't saying; there are some questions even a scientist can't bring himself to ask.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four-Part Harmony

**Author's Note:**

> Character meta masquerading as fic. Poorly. Like, Meta put on a pair of Groucho Marx glasses and called it a day.
> 
> (And I'm working on the next chapter of FTGU, but I have canon feels that were distracting me and needed to be dealt with...)
> 
> Dialogue from "Rumbling" and "Monolith".

_"Look for those doors,"_ Cecil says.

 _"I'll start looking very soon, okay?"_ Carlos says.

What Carlos does not say is that there is a significant chance it makes no difference whether he looks or not. Dana wandered this otherworldly desert for over a year, after all, before the angels came and opened doors across it, to bring Night Vale's citizens home.

There are no angels in this desert anymore. There are no citizens of Night Vale in this desert, either.

Carlos had actually submitted a local voter registration and the forms for a state driver's license, when he and Cecil were house-hunting. He hadn't told Cecil; he'd wanted to surprise him with the accepted applications.

It had been months, but he hadn't heard back yet, when he went into the House and the door shut behind him.

Even if Carlos finds a door in the desert now, he doesn't know if he'll be able to open it. Or whether he'll be able to pass through it, if he can. And once opened, he has no way of knowing if he'll be able to shut it again. If he walks through a hypothetical door to Night Vale, will the door stay open, waiting for him to leave? And while it's open, what else besides Carlos may come through?

The rumbling in the desert is something he's growing accustomed to. He can't explain it yet, but he's observed it, catalogued it; he's starting to understand it.

Some things at first seem to be strange and malevolent, only to turn out to be pure and innocent.

Carlos does not believe the rumbling is one of those things. As fascinating and important to science as it is to study, he wants to study it _here_ ; he does not want to observe its effects on Night Vale. Not again.

It's different here. The otherworldly desert was a terrifying place, at first. Carlos started at every rustle and rattle that echoed across these barren plains, spent his first nights sitting with his back pressed to a little outcropping of stone, forcing his eyes wide. To keep watch, not because he thought he would fall asleep; he'd been far too worked up for that. He'd clutched his phone in both hands, wanting to call Cecil but not wanting to hear his voicemail greeting again; that cheery, welcoming voice might have made him cry.

After three days he was so exhausted he collapsed into a doze, slumped across the burning ground in the hot daylight. And when he awoke he was still alive, still afraid and alone but much less tired, able to start exploring this new place he now dwelled.

Thinking back, it reminds Carlos of his first days in Night Vale. Not the ache of loneliness, but otherwise, he remembers well the quivering of his knees, the sour bile of fear in his mouth, the grittiness of his straining eyes. But he'd gotten used to it. Gotten used to the fear, at first. The town, later, as he began to learn more about it, began to understand it, little by little. Investigating its dangers and its mysteries, its mysterious dangers and dangerous mysteries.

And Cecil, always Cecil, his show on the radio and his number on Carlos's phone and his voice in Carlos's dreams. It took Carlos a year to figure out that mystery, as dangerous and unexpected and incredible as it was; and he knows he's only just scratched its surface, can't even estimate how much more there is to understand.

Somewhere along the line, Carlos fell in love. With Cecil, and with Cecil's town.

How could he not? Loving Cecil as he did, how could he not love what Cecil loved, so deeply and devotedly? Cecil openly, publicly admired and desired Carlos from his first day in town. But that was only on occasion, only when Cecil was in the mood to talk about relationships and attraction and all those compelling forces of human nature.

Night Vale, Cecil never has enough words for. Whatever Cecil's mood, he talks about Night Vale; Night Vale is integral to each and every one of those moods.

Carlos understands this. He knows what it is, to love an abstract concept, to love something so much larger than yourself that the best you can hope for is to give yourself to it, and recognize that self as a tiny part of a whole so great that you are lost within it—and have that be enough. Carlos has loved science like that for as long as he can remember.

But before Night Vale, before Cecil, Carlos never understood anyone's attachment to where they lived, except in the most abstract sense. He knew that the majority of people experienced homesickness, had places they wanted to go back to sometimes, for no reason except to be there. But it never made sense to him, not really. Carlos never had anywhere that he considered his hometown; he'd never lived anywhere long enough for that. He'd never missed having one, either. Everywhere has the potential to be interesting; and new places were the most interesting, because there's so much to be learned about them.

But every one thing he learned in Night Vale, led to ten more questions. Carlos wondered sometimes if this was yet another unique property of the location, if it was because Night Vale really was the most interesting community in America. Or perhaps everywhere is like that, if you stay long enough, if you study it deeply enough. 

Carlos isn't sure this is what home is like for most people, a nexus of endless, ongoing inquiry. All he knows is that somewhere along the line, he began to love Night Vale, in spite of the terror it still inspired in him. Not as Cecil loved it, of course. But as Carlos had never felt for anywhere before. When he asked Cecil if they could make a home together, it wasn't only out of the desire to live with Cecil, to further entwine their mutual existences; Carlos also wanted a place for himself in Night Vale, something more permanent than an apartment rented by the month.

Watching Strex come in and try to change the town, to make it something else, something more productive and sunny and so much less interesting, confirmed how much Night Vale had come to mean to him. It hurt Cecil more, of course, and Carlos would have wanted to fix it just for that; but it hurt him as well, to see this community—his community—being unmade.

Then the last door in the desert closed, before Carlos could go through it.

A scientist should never hesitate to recognize the truth, but that straightforward proof was painful to accept: that whatever he and Cecil have together, however Carlos might have come to think of Night Vale as home, it is not his.

Sometimes Carlos wonders if this is dramatic irony—if that's the words for it; he's a scientist, not a student of literature. But this is science, too, the balance of equivalent forces: that Cecil is something outside scientific understanding, and yet Carlos loves him; so too is Carlos something outside Night Vale's acceptance, despite Cecil's love for him.

Carlos hasn't mentioned this to Cecil. Nor its inevitable corollary: If he can never go back to Night Vale—if, having left once, however accidentally, he has forsaken any chance of return—what does it mean for them?

Though as a scientist Carlos appreciates the value of all questions, this one he can barely ask himself. He's yet to manage to speak it aloud, for fear of having it answered.

He knows he can't ask Cecil choose between them, between Carlos and Night Vale. There would be no point in asking; he knows what choice Cecil will make. What choice he would have to make, eventually, however painful it would be for him; fundamentally, there is no choice at all.

Cecil loves him, Carlos knows. Loves him ridiculously and passionately and madly and sweetly, loves him so much it frightens Carlos, as much as anything else in Night Vale, because he doubts he's capable himself of that depth and breadth of affection. Even giving his whole heart and soul to Cecil seems a meager, stingy recompense, compared to what Cecil offers him. Cecil loves him as much as any man can be loved.

But not like Cecil loves Night Vale.

Losing Carlos would hurt Cecil—this separation is already hard on him; if Carlos never comes back, it will break Cecil's heart, and there is a non-negligible chance that he might never entirely get over it, might never risk loving any other person so much again.

But if Cecil lost Night Vale, he wouldn't be Cecil anymore. No more than Carlos the Scientist would be, without science.

So Carlos doesn't say anything.

Sometimes he suspects that Cecil has realized it already, on some subconscious level he refuses to acknowledge, with all his well-practiced aptitude for denial. Carlos wonders if that's why, however often Cecil tells Carlos to look for the doors in the desert, he's made no effort himself to look for their counterparts in Night Vale. He hasn't spoken to Carlos's team of scientists, or tried to go into the dog park or the house that doesn't exist. He talks as if Carlos is trapped, as if this desert is a prison which locked him in, when actually it's Night Vale that closed the door and shut him out.

Or maybe Cecil just can't accept that truth. No more than he can comprehend how Carlos could be anything but miserable, being anywhere but Night Vale.

But this otherworldly desert isn't a prison. It isn't Night Vale, either; in some ways it's like it, but just as much is unlike it. It's unlike anywhere Carlos has ever been before, and this is amazing, now that he's learned enough to do more than fear it. Besides, as far as he knows he's the first scientist to come to this desert, and might be the last; it's his duty to study as much as he can, while he has the opportunity.

Plus there's Doug and Alicia and their army, who are welcoming of Carlos in a way the people of Night Vale never were. In Night Vale, Carlos was an outsider, however beloved a figure Cecil might have claimed him to be; he wasn't from the town, and was perpetually reminded that he never would be. But the masked warriors came, long ago, from another place; they know the otherworldly desert well by now, but it's not their home, no more than it's Carlos's, and that forges an understanding between them. They're all outsiders, here, strangers together in this strange and fascinating land.

He'd like to talk to Cecil about it, but Cecil has no context for this. Cecil traveled abroad a little, but he's never _lived_ anywhere else. Cecil, the Voice of Night Vale, with his name on a tablet in City Hall, has never had to make a place for himself somewhere; he's always had one.

That's part of who Cecil is, too, and Carlos loves that part of him. Sometimes he even envies it, wishing he had that confidence, that easy, utter assurance that he is exactly where he's supposed to be. Cecil is so certain that he nearly convinced Carlos. He'd put his head on Carlos's shoulder, and Carlos felt like he belonged, as he'd never felt anywhere before. Living with Cecil made Night Vale feel like home.

But just as Cecil gave him that understanding, Carlos wishes that he could share its inverse with Cecil. Share with him what it's like to live somewhere totally new, the delight of discovery, the thrill of exploration. The satisfaction when the strange begins, slowly and erratically, to become familiar; the way you yourself change, adapting to the new environment, and in the doing discover how much more you are capable of than you were ever previously aware.

Carlos still loves Night Vale, in spite of everything, and there is still so much he has yet to learn there; but he missed this, too. In the desert's night, looking up at the shifting stars and trying (unsuccessfully) to chart their courses in the sand, Carlos is struck by how much he's enjoying himself, the excitement of the entirely novel, the completely unknown. 

He wants, suddenly, with the overwhelming, yearning desperation of a thirsty man in an endless desert, for Cecil to be here with him, watching this night sky that is nothing like Night Vale's. He wants to sit with Cecil and point out the passing comets, wants to kiss Cecil under these inconsistent constellations. He wants to lay with Cecil on the strangely soft non-silicate sand, until their rolling bodies scatter these meticulously inaccurate charts, erasing them so they can record better data together.

He wants Cecil to have a taste of this joy; he wants to give his science to Cecil, as Cecil gave him Night Vale, generously and fearlessly. 

The next time Carlos calls Cecil, he talks about the constellations, about Alicia's dog, about his research. It's not everything he hasn't said, not yet. But some of it.

 _"I'd love you to come visit,"_ Carlos says.

 _"We'll see,"_ Cecil says.


End file.
